“If you are not a school of the future, you won’t be a school in the future.”
In NAIS President Pat Bassett’s presentation Monday, he called upon educators to frame their inquiry about becoming Schools of the Future around four Essential Questions:
- What should we teach?
- How should we teach?
- How should we assess?
- How do we embed the vision?
He then elaborated upon each; perhaps it was due to time running out, but his discussion of the fourth was most abstract and least pertinent, I thought. But I offer some summary and thoughts about the first three:
What should we teach?
Pat urged schools emphasize the The Five C’s: Creativity, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, Communication, and Character. He argued that thought some schools may have done good work with articulating the language arts or science curriculum, K-12, via mapping, now it is incumbent upon us to map these skill and value curricular strands: “What is your PS through 12th grade leadership curriculum?”
But once schools have embraced the responsibility to ensure students can do, rather than just know, it is time to then grapple again with what is is students must know: “Is there a body of knowledge that is mandatory and universal for our students?”
This is the right place to start, and I appreciate Pat’s focus on this most essential of questions as the foundation for creating schools of the future. (more…)